Street Angel (1994)

"Well, I wrote this... um, it's a song about this guy who came into my life, but left just as quick. And his eyes were that intense, that it just makes you, even if you didn't know him, you would go, like, 'wow.' And you could be, like, the toughest person, but those eyes would make you be whatever he wanted you to be."~Stevie Nicks, Pittsburgh, PA 102.5 WDVE 7/94

[On what led movie star Greta Garbo to retire at the height of her fame, and the song 'Greta'] "I wish I could have asked her [Garbo], 'What happened to you?' Anyone in my business asks themselves that question, 'do I really need this in my life?' But very few people actually walk away."~Stevie Nicks, Boston Herald, 7-94

"Street Angel was written in a hotel in LA, the Peninsula Hotel. I had to leave my house that I lived in because it was attacked by bees. It was a five story house, kinda like a New York house that went straight up, and I lived there, Liza lived there, and four or five other people lived there and we had to go 'cause the bees were so intense that they had to be moved, not killed, but moved. And I went to the hotel and there were two movies on TV about homelessness and a lot about it on CNN and I was really very, very, very touched at how sad the situation was, and I didn't have any solutions. This is not a political song. I was kinda looking out at Hollywood, all the sparkling lights, and people walking down the streets, and how wild it would be if I was out there and I didn't have a place to go, or sleep. This would be the most frightening thing for me, I mean... just as long as if you had enough money to pay your rent, you can almost accept anything, but as soon as someone threats to take your home away, that would scare me. So I just wrote a song about a girl who was brought up on the streets and this very much kinda street gypsy... she didn't have much, just her friends and family; she was a Street Angel. There then was this guy, this really, really rich guy fell in love with her, and tried to convince her to go with him and not be poor anymore, to marry him and leave her world, and in the end she really couldn't do that, she really couldn't change and be a rich man's lady, and so she, in order to make him let her go and go on with his life, she let it be known to him that she killed herself; she committed suicide. She fell down the steps... he didn't hear her voice anymore. She went away, she couldnt live that kinda life."~Stevie Nicks, Philadelphia, PA WMMR 7/31/94

What's the difference between a Street Angel and a more celestial one?
"Well, your heavenly origined angel is more like a princess. A street angel is not just a high-powered witch princess--she can also go out and blend in with people. I've always felt that that's the way I am: I can jump into the audience or go home with them. Then if I'm bored, I'm outta here."~Stevie Nicks, Details magazine, 8-94

"Street Angel is another one that I wrote just by myself. The ones that I write just by myself on the piano are always a little towards the classical kind of thing. They usually stick pretty close to the way that I did it because even though I'm not very good on the piano, I have a certain style, and I have a certain timing, and my foot kind of goes, you know... and they like my timing, so they kind of stick with the way that I did it. And with Street Angel, it was very, very simple. And then at the end when we were done recording, I went back in and Waddy Wachtel, who's a very good friend of mine, came in..."~Stevie Nicks, Tommy Vance interview, 1994

"Street Angel is not a story of how to help the homeless. It's a story about a girl who is homeless, and a man that has a lot of money that falls in love with her. And the fact is, is that no matter how much she cares about him, she really can't give up her life on the street, and her friends and her family and all her people she hangs with... she really can't change that. And finally, at the end, in order to send him back to his life, she basically makes him think that she has committed suicide. That she's dead. Because she knows he won't leave her any other way, and she knows she really can't be with him."~Stevie Nicks, Up Close, 1994

"There is a very cool electric violin, so when you hear a guitar playing kinda like Jimi Hendrix, it's not, it's a violin which is totally cool. Um, it's about don't take life for granted, because you or the person next to you could get a horrible disease or something and die... and that would be a bummer [laughs] so it's really about to just take time and smell the roses, take time to live every moment with all your friends and everything 'cause they may not be with you always."~Stevie Nicks, Philadelphia, PA WMMR 7/31/94

"This next song is a song that... I just finished telling this to the people in San Francisco last night, that I wrote in San Francisco when I went up there in 1973 to kind of cool out from L.A.. And I met somebody. And I didn't know whether or not I wanted to come back to Los Angeles, to Lindsey or not. So I had to make a decision. And, the decision obviously was to go back to Los Angeles and do this thing, but... so this song is called Destiny."~Stevie Nicks, Irvine Meadows, CA August 31, 1994

"That song [Rose Garden] is very much a premonition, but I wrote it about some people in my family when I was just graduating high school. I wasn't in a band or anything. I wrote purely for myself on a guitar I got for my 16th birthday. I didn't want to be famous or anything, I just loved to close myself up somewhere with candlelight and a really neat pen and paper and write. It became a very important thing for me."~Stevie Nicks, Boston Herald, 7-94

"Rose Garden I wrote on the guitar when I was about sixteen years old. I was a sophomore in high school. I was very upset about something that I saw, just a little something that happened, and I just sat down and wrote that song. And then I always wanted to do it, and it always seemed, again, not the right time for it. And this time I sat down and I actually played it on the guitar--I don't play guitar much anymore--the people I was working with said, 'well, this is a serious song, and it's a good song... you know, it's a little kind of country...' and let's do it, let's do it, you know. And having Bernie Leadon, you know, with his Eagle background, and his acoustic, he's so good... um, you know, he just picked it right up, and it was done. I mean, that was one of the songs that was worked out very, very quickly. And it is recorded exactly the way that-- I knew one pick, I knew the Joan Baez [hums] 'da da da dum dum,' that kind of thing. So it was like [sings] 'you never promised me a rose garden, da da da dum dum.' [laughs] So that's how it was..."~Stevie Nicks, Tommy Vance interview, 1994

[On whether twenty-five years ago or when she as a little girl could have ever imagined what her life was going to be like] "You know, a lot of people ask me that and I, and I think about it seriously and I think about the song I wrote when I was seventeen and its called I never promised you a Rose Garden, and it really goes into this whole thing about now I have a big house with pillars standing all around, and a garden with roses men to love me, and acres of land, I was seventeen years old, how could I have had any idea, you know how could I have really known, but I think there's a little bit of me that did know, I just really do."~Stevie Nicks, WMGK Radio Interview, July 1998

"I didn't write 'Maybe Love Will Change Your Mind', I picked it. I didn't have to do this song, it's kinda like adopting it. It belongs to a friend of mine and her name is Sandy Stewart, who is from Houston. She's a really good friend of mine, and I love her music and all of her songs, and I picked out this song which is kinda like a reflective song, that maybe love will come into your life and change it, and maybe it won't, but at the same time we hope love will change everyone mind's about the world... and about life."~Stevie Nicks, Houston, TX Mix 96.5 FM 5/28/94

[On how she got Bob Dylan to join her on her cover of Just Like a Woman] "I called him [Dylan] and told him that I had recored the song. I nearly finished it because I wasn't going to ask him to come down and hear an unfinished track. You just don't do that to Bob Dylan. You're very careful, everything you do and say around him, because he's really sensitive. You don't want to frighten him."
~Stevie Nicks, Rolling Stone, 9-94

"I told Bob [Dylan] that someday I was gonna do Just Like a Woman. And he just sort of smiled his Bob Dylan smile, and said 'cool', you know, cool. And so when I did it, I recorded it, I pretty much finished it, and then I got people to get in touch with him, and he came down to the studio, and I knew I'd only get him to be there one night. So I played it for him, and he just stood there, with very little expression, and when it was over, the first thing out of my mouth, I think, was like, 'do you hate it? You hate it, right? It's horrible.' And he said to me, 'no, I like it, really a lot.' He said 'you told me you were going to do this song someday'... and he said, 'you're one of the few women I know that actually follows through on anything.' He said, 'I like it,' And I said, 'do you want to sing on it?' And he said, 'no, I don't.' And I said 'why?' And he said, 'because I think you sang it great.' He said, 'your philosophy you picked up from it, the way, from your interpretation of what I said is great. There's no reason for me to sing on it.' And I said, 'will you play some guitar or some harmonica? Pleeeease?' And he said, 'yeah, I will.' And so he went out and he played a little guitar and he played a little harmonica. He came in and we listened to it and he said 'it's good, it's really good, Stevie. And I hope that people really enjoy it again this time.' He said 'cool,' and he left. And I think he wasn't really surprised that I did his song. He knew I loved his music."~Stevie Nicks, Tommy Vance interview, 1994

[On having to "beg" Bob Dylan to help out on her cover of Just Like a Woman] "Bob Dylan is the kind of person that, you don't really say hello to Bob- you wait for Bob to say hello to you. And so, I wanted him to sing on it [Just Like a Woman] and he said, 'no, I don't want to.' And I said, 'well... will you guitar? Will you play some harmonica, will you do something? 'Cause I kind of need you to do something on this song so I feel that it's cool that I've done it."

[Mark and Brian ask how she got in touch with Dylan] "Well actually, I just went on tour with him about eight years ago for 32 days. And cemented the relationship. [laughing] I told him that I was going to do this song someday and I did. So I called him and said 'guess what? I did the song that I told you I was going to do eight years ago...and remember Australia, Bob?' And he said yes. And I said okay. And I said 'well, I did it.' And he said okay. And I said 'I need you to come down to the studio,' and he said alright. And he did."~Stevie Nicks, Mark and Brian show, 12-94

"I became friends with somebody who was really good friends with Jane. [Goodall] They asked me if I would write a song. Michael Jackson said he would write it but he never did. So I agreed to write a song. It opened up a lot of wounds for me. It was a very difficult song for me to write. It's called "Jane's Song" and you'll hear it because it will be on the next record. We went to Dallas with Jane and I sang it live. It came out beautiful and it changed my life. It made me believe in a lot of things I didn't realize were possible. And she really is an angel. What she does is incredible. So I wanted to be lifted above once again, just being a rock & roll singer and do something time would remember. So that's why I'm trying to do other things."~Stevie Nicks, Ed Shockey interview, 94.1 WYSP Philadelphia, 1991

"I was so inspired by her [Jane Goodall] books that I wrote this song ten minutes after I got to meet her."~Stevie Nicks, Boston Herald, 7-94

"Not knowing how to write a song about chimpanzees-- since I've never had or known one-- I basically had to go through Jane's [Goodall] feelings to write it. When she hears it [the song "Jane"] it's going to blow her mind that somebody in my generation, somebody in my line of work, would put her and what she does as a priority over what I do. There is a big part of me that wants to be worthwhile in other areas also. There is certainly more to this world than rock and roll. I know that." ~Stevie Nicks, 1994

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